Figurative Communication Terminology

The "Big Three" categories of the Mind are Imagination (synonymous with the Greek Phantasia, imaging), the Symbolic, and Reality. Imagination is not the obverse (other side) of Reality but affords, rather, a means of adaptation to Reality. Imagination is the reworking of the raw materials of sense, notions, percepts, ideas, images as well as the process of recombining memories of past experiences and previously formed images into novel, creative constructions. These may be primarily wishful, distortions, or largely reality-bound; involve future plans and projections; or be mental reviews of the past. Imaginations' constructs can be divided into: (1) "Simple" (imagining something seen before); (2) "Compound (e.g. the act of conceiving a centaur from compounding the sight of a man and a horse); (3) Reproductive (taking the helter-skelter data of the senses and producing whole objects--completing the incompleteness of objects sensed); (4) Productive (the power through which the categories order the material of intuition to make possible an understanding of a unified world; (5) being the condition for novelty, as with Fancy (a compounded imagination); and (6) "Constructive" (the creating of its own world, shaping details into its own unity according to its own controlling plan). Imagination is what gives rise to Imagery. In literary circles Imagery means the collective images in a work that signify all objects and qualities of sense perception and/or what is generated by ones imagination. More frequently, Visual Imagery promotes aesthetic enjoyment of recalled memories or the judging of whether one prefers one person, place, or thing to another. The components of an Imagery embrace one or more Images, Symbols, Similes, and Metaphors.

When Imagery combines a literal and sensuous quality with an abstract or suggestive aspect, it becomes a Symbol. All Symbols are apprehended through specific Images, such as the white whale in Moby Dick. If the abstract or suggestive aspect is directly expressed, it is a Simile. If an analogy is implied, it is a Metaphor. The packaging of the components of Imagery is in special kinds of Figures of Speech--its secondary references--called Vehicles (especially Symbols, Metaphors, and Similies)--so as to give vividness and immediacy to the Receiver's thoughts and emotions. However, Imagery resembles Figurative Language, particularly metaphors and similes--not as the figurative expression but what it literally denotes. The Imagery is the mental picture evoked by the Figures of Communication (FOC), a term I have coined to embrace emotive speech, writings, gestures, appearances, and actions. Each snapshot Image represents an Abstraction or an Abstract Concept embracing a "likeness, representation, or copy of a thing's natural shape"; a thought, conception; a semblance (a token appearance); similarity (something alike in some respects); an appearance (come in sight); a shadow (shaded); a statue; an impression (stamp); and a picture. Eidetic Images are unusually vivid images which possess many of the characteristics of an actual sense-perception impression.

A Primordial Image (Dominants, Imago's, Mythological Images, Behavior Patterns) is a structural component of the Collective Unconscious described thousands of years ago by Ancient Africans as being an instance of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics--a deep unconscious representation of experiences common to a human race for countless generations. An Intellectual Fancy (the power of inventing illustrative imagery) is a mental image or picture founded upon capricious (guidance by whims or fancies instead of reason) or whimsical (likes, dislikes) associations or resemblances. Imaginative is a high degree of imagination, creativity, inventiveness, and originality. Imaging is envisioning an image of the desired future organizational state that can serve as a guide to interim strategies, decisions, and behaviors. Imaginary exists only in the imagination, as to have imaginary fears. Imagism is the power of the mind to decompose its conceptions and to recombine elements of them at its pleasure. Iconoclasm arose to signify images acquiring hostile overtones. A "Contingent Being" is one which is able not to exist, meaning its essence can be divorced from existence, as seen in the concept of "Seem." A "Bad" Idealized Self-Image is an inappropriate sense of ones positive aspects, fashioned as a defense mechanism. Icon is the "Halo" of the "Star" of ones mental or the public's drama. "Payload" is what carries the impact of the FOC "Star."

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